01/18/2015 archive

Money, and capitalism, are in and of themselves soulless, neither good nor evil.  Like all tools, they come alive in the hands of their master.

The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse.     Henry David Thoreau, Life without Principle

I agree.  I much prefer to work at some task that satisfies my mind and spirit, and need not think about it feeding my body, unless I am uncommonly hungry. Yet even that great Transcendental anti-materialist, Thoreau, had to admit the native wisdom of woodcutter  Alex Therien’s reasoning for the utility of cash:

When I asked him if he could do without money, he showed the convenience of money in such a way as to suggest and coincide with the most philosophical accounts of the origin of this institution, and the very derivation of the word pecunia. If an ox were his property, and he wished to get needles and thread at the store, he thought it would be inconvenient and impossible soon to go on mortgaging some portion of the creature each time to that amount.    Walden

For more discussion about the utility of having an economy, vs. the valuing of money over people, please follow me, beyond the Infinity symbol a la kos.

So, who do you hate the most?  The Bolts who left Baltimore high and dry in the middle of the night or the Patsies who dinked around Hartford so they could Stadium blackmail Massachusetts?

I say I hate them about equally.

I’ll give the Bolts the rooting nod today though because they’ll just be meat for the Packers (who look set to win after the first half) or for the Seahawks who, as I said below, I find unobjectionable.  The Bolts are an inferior team that’s been lucky so far.

Unfortunately I think the Patsies will end that streak today.  Tom Brady is a bit long in the tooth but he’s still one of the best in the league and, free of worries about drafting a Quarterback, Belichick has been able to use it to build the Patsies.  They have weaknesses, but not many; and can be beaten, but not easily.

Game starts @ 6 pm on CBS

Ok, maybe that was a little bit over the top.  I make no excuses for my rooting interest in the Packers, part of which is genetic (I’m only half troll), but most of which is based on my anarcho-syndicalist politics.

The Packers are “the only publicly owned company with a board of directors in American professional sports”.  They are one of only 7 publicly traded companies (Atlanta Braves, New York Rangers, New York Knicks, the Carolina Hurricanes, the Seattle Mariners, and the Toronto Blue Jays) which are required to fill out annual reports for the SEC and other regulators.  Until 1965 they played at City Field, Lambeau is the name of one of the founders (the other is George Whitney Calhoun) and first coach.

“No shareholder may own over 200,000 shares, a safeguard to ensure that no individual can assume control of the club.”  “Shares of stock include voting rights, but the redemption price is minimal, no dividends are ever paid, the stock cannot appreciate in value, and stock ownership brings no season ticket privileges.”  The last time they sold shares the price was a flat $200 and as of 2005 over 111,921 people owned 1 or more of the 4,749,925 shares.

Now some people may think that all they do in Wisconsin is drink-

Well, they drink a lot, but the Summer is short and the Winter nights long dark and cold and without much else to do.  There are other hobbies however like eating Brats and Cheese and writing songs.  I was looking for a simple sample of their fight song and I found these pieces in the Rap, Polka, Punk, Southern Rock, House, and Lil’ Wayne categories (yes, he has his own category).

Now if I only knew who Lil’ Wayne was.

And they make cookies.

Cookies!

I’m sure the Seahawks are a fine team and fully worthy of their fans devotion and loyalty (in the sense that Billionaire Paul Allen, Microsoft, and any franchise that hasn’t Bolted deserve it), but I must say that my heart is in Green Bay with the Packers and Cheeseheads.

The Seahawks are everyone’s pick to win (7.5 points) which is only fitting for the top seeded team.  They have a good offense that totally confounded the Packers in Game 1 of the season but the Packers were sporting a new defense that has since been abandoned and have performed much better.  The real story is on the Packers side of the ball where the #1 offense will be facing the #1 defense.  Aaron Rodgers is still feeling the effects of being stepped on in the Lions game, so there is that.  Still, I rate the chances about even especially if the Packer D can get their act together.

Coverage on Faux starting @ 3 pm.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

January 18 is the 18th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 347 days remaining until the end of the year (348 in leap years).

On this day in 1865, the United States House of Representatives passes the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery in the United States. It read, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude…shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution officially abolished and continues to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, passed by the House on January 31, 1865, and adopted on December 6, 1865. On December 18, Secretary of State William H. Seward, in a proclamation, declared it to have been adopted. It was the first of the Reconstruction Amendments.

President Lincoln was concerned that the Emancipation Proclamation, which outlawed slavery in the ten Confederate states still in rebellion in 1863, would be seen as a temporary war measure, since it was based on his war powers and did not abolish slavery in the border states.

History

The first twelve amendments were adopted within fifteen years of the Constitution’s adoption. The first ten (the Bill of Rights) were adopted in 1791, the Eleventh Amendment in 1795 and the Twelfth Amendment in 1804. When the Thirteenth Amendment was proposed there had been no new amendments adopted in more than sixty years.

During the secession crisis, but prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, the majority of slavery-related bills had protected slavery. The United States had ceased slave importation and intervened militarily against the Atlantic slave trade, but had made few proposals to abolish domestic slavery, and only a small number to abolish the domestic slave trade. Representative John Quincy Adams had made a proposal in 1839, but there were no new proposals until December 14, 1863, when a bill to support an amendment to abolish slavery throughout the entire United States was introduced by Representative James Mitchell Ashley (Republican, Ohio). This was soon followed by a similar proposal made by Representative James F. Wilson(Republican, Iowa).

Eventually the Congress and the public began to take notice and a number of additional legislative proposals were brought forward. On January 11, 1864, Senator John B. Henderson of Missouri submitted a joint resolution for a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. The abolition of slavery had historically been associated with Republicans, but Henderson was one of the War Democrats. The Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Lyman Trumbull (Republican, Illinois), became involved in merging different proposals for an amendment. On February 8 of that year, another Republican, Senator Charles Sumner (Radical Republican, Massachusetts), submitted a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery as well as guarantee equality. As the number of proposals and the extent of their scope began to grow, the Senate Judiciary Committee presented the Senate with an amendment proposal combining the drafts of Ashley, Wilson and Henderson.

Originally the amendment was co-authored and sponsored by Representatives James Mitchell Ashley (Republican, Ohio) and James F. Wilson (Republican, Iowa) and Senator John B. Henderson (Democrat, Missouri).

While the Senate did pass the amendment on April 8, 1864, by a vote of 38 to 6, the House declined to do so. After it was reintroduced by Representative James Mitchell Ashley, President Lincoln took an active role in working for its passage through the House by ensuring the amendment was added to the Republican Party platform for the upcoming Presidential elections. His efforts came to fruition when the House passed the bill on January 31, 1865, by a vote of 119 to 56. The Thirteenth Amendment’s archival copy bears an apparent Presidential signature, under the usual ones of the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate, after the words “Approved February 1, 1865”.

The Thirteenth Amendment completed the abolition of slavery, which had begun with the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863.

Shortly after the amendment’s adoption, selective enforcement of certain laws, such as laws against vagrancy, allowed blacks to continue to be subjected to involuntary servitude in some cases.

The Thirteenth Amendment was followed by the Fourteenth Amendment (civil rights in the states), in 1868, and the Fifteenth Amendment (which bans racial voting restrictions), in 1870.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

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The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with George Stephanopolis: The guests on this Sunday’s “This Week’ are: Director of Europol Rob Wainwright; and  former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

The roundtable guests are: ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd;  Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm; Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL); and Fusion‘s Alicia Menendez.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests are: British Prime Minister David Cameron; Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL); and White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer.

His panel guests are former Obama adviser Stephanie Cutter; Michael Gerson, Washington Post; Mark Halperin, Bloomberg; and CBS News Congressional Correspondent Nancy Cordes.

Meet the Press with Chuck Todd: This guest are: Charlie Hebdo‘s editor-in-chief, Gerard Biard; White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-NC) with his fainting couch.

State of the Union: The guests are: the new chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC); Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT); and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), new chair of the House Oversight Committee.

 Pope Francis: Huge crowds gather in Manila for Mass

  18 January 2015 Last updated at 05:27

BBC

Huge crowds have gathered to see Pope Francis celebrate an outdoor Mass in the Philippine capital Manila.

Thousands of people arrived at Rizal Park on Sunday morning, hours before the Mass is due to begin.

Twenty years ago, more than five million people attended a Mass celebrated here by Pope John Paul II.

The Vatican said Pope Francis would dedicate the service in part to the victims of Typhoon Haiyan, which devastated the country in 2013.

The Mass will be the Pope’s final full day in the Philippines, where there are 80 million Catholics, concluding his six-day tour of Asia.

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